1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a glass sheet processing method and a glass sheet processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Glass sheet processing methods are known that involve irradiating a laser beam on a surface of a glass sheet to heat the glass sheet, moving the laser irradiating position, and quenching a rear side of the irradiating position so that the glass sheet may be cut by thermal stress. Also, there are time when techniques need to be implemented for arranging at least a part of a cut face of the glass sheet to be diagonal with respect to the glass sheet surface. For example, such a technique may be implemented to facilitate separation of cut pieces of the glass sheet from each other. As for forming a cut face that is diagonal to the glass sheet surface, for example, a technique is disclosed that involves offsetting a quenching position with respect to the trajectory of a laser beam when quenching the rear side of the irradiating position (see e.g., Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2011-219338).
Note that a cut face of a glass sheet may be chamfered by grinding corner portions of the cut face after cutting the glass sheet. An edge face of the glass sheet that has been chamfered may include a front side ground face that is diagonally connected to the surface of the glass sheet and a backside ground face that is diagonally connected to a back face of the glass sheet. The front side ground face and the backside ground face are arranged to be in different orientations. It has conventionally been difficult to form such a chamfered edge face profile through laser irradiation.